Shaw Prize awarded to immunobiologist

Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Ph.D., the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology, a member of Yale Cancer Center, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, is one of three scientists awarded the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine for 2011. The Shaw Prize consists of three annual prizes: astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences. Each carries an award of $1 million.

Medzhitov shares this year’s prize in life science and medicine with Jules A. Hoffmann, Ph.D., professor at the University of Strasbourg, France; and Bruce A. Beutler, M.D., chair of the Department of Genetics at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif. The Shaw Prize Foundation honored them “for their discovery of the molecular mechanism of innate immunity, the first line of defense against pathogens.”